04.16. LESSON 16

LESSON 16 To disregard the chapter bar between Romans 6:1-21 and Romans 7:1-25 helps one to appreciate the coherence and fullness of Paul’s argument on Sanctification. For instance, the representation of Christ and saints as King and subjects suggests warfare; as Master and slaves, service; as Husband and wife, fruitfulness.

Nature of Law and of Man

"When we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were through the law, wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death" (Romans 7:5). This verse, adding to the thought of earlier statements in Romans about the law the expression, "the sinful passions which were through the law," is the basis of the discussion on the nature of law and of man which follows in Romans 7:7-24. From this passage, we may learn what both law and man are. In moral value, it far outweighs all merely human books ever written on law and psychology.

After stoutly denying that his gospel implies that the law itself is sinful, Paul adds: "Howbeit (nevertheless) I had not known sin, except through the law." Paul has been saying "we" in this chapter until now. I think he narrows down to "I" (used about thirty times) for the rest of the chapter, with one exception in Romans 7:14, in order to present in the liveliest way possible an elemental Christian truth, namely, that every man must be translated out of a man-centered kingdom into a God-centered one—out of Adam into Christ. In this chapter, we have our best opportunity to look down into the deep purposes and workings of law, and into the abysmal deeps, both conscious and subconscious, of our own personalities. Faithfully, should we study this great Scripture.

Paul says there was a time when he, unconscious of any sin in him, was satisfied with himself. But that when he came to see that the commandment, "Thou shalt not covet," was meant to forbid all self-centered desires (Christ so interpreted Moses), he realized that the very impulse of his nature was unlawful. Sin, the seed of the Serpent (Genesis 3:15), which was lying dormant within, under the quickening touch of law crawled up into consciousness and fatally stung his self-satisfaction. The word "sin" occurs thirteen times in these verses, but the word "sins" is not found. This Scripture digs down deep to the sin-nature which expresses itself in sins. That no flesh is righteous before God becomes evident under law, the infallible detector of man’s inborn evil propensities.

Whence come the proclivities of children to sin? Not from Adam as God made him. We need ever to remember that we are Adam’s descendants after he became unfit to live with God. Children at a very tender age rebel against parental law, and guilefully try to hide their lawlessness. Were they left to themselves, would they ever know what Is wrong with them? Apart from law, Paul would never have become conscious of his sin-warped nature. Men cannot get from Adam to Christ without Moses. The better one knows the law, the better he knows how great a sinner he is. Moreover, the essence of sin is rebellion, and prohibitions of law irritate tainted human nature and inflame it unto "all manner of coveting... that through the commandment sin might become exceeding sinful." Law intensifies human lawlessness. After the law had thus revealed Paul unto himself, he lost his good opinion of himself, and became a self-condemned sinner. Certainly, this could not have occurred, however, had he been "totally depraved."

"For sin, finding, occasion, through the commandment beguiled me, and through it slew me." As Satan beguiled Eve (Genesis 3:1-6) through the lie that she could better her condition by eating the forbidden fruit, so he still through the lie that pious men can improve themselves by observing ordinances, and by using the law as an immediate rule of life, beguiles and betrays them. The trick is that men never obey God’s law. Rather than improvement, therefore, all sorts of lawless desires are produced in them. Witness the Pharisees of Christ’s time, including Saul of Tarsus. Thus, the law, by bringing the deep, unknown abscess at the root of human nature out to light, does its designed holy work of preparing honest men, despairing of legal advancement, to accept in genuine repentance the gospel of grace.

Note how Paul vindicates law through all this chapter. Law, which in its deepest and broadest sense represents the mind, will, and character of God, is coeval with God. Without disturbing the legal status of Gentiles, God added, for Jews, a national, provisional law to his universal, human law. The annulment of this Jewish law, when it had served its purpose, put Jews back under universal law again: but with the superlative gain of an opportunity to both Gentiles and Jews for justification, sanctification, and glorification in Christ. It is absurd to blame law for revealing man to himself in his inherent inadequacy as it is to blame a microscope for revealing germs in drinking water. That sin gets worse when treated with the perfect remedy, law, proves its desperate nature. Should it not crush down man’s pride and self-sufficiency to learn from his friendly, faithful Maker and Redeemer that his state is such by nature that all merely human struggling after reformation only deepens his misery?

Paul’s Three Men

Romans 7:1-25 has been called the problem chapter of the book. Expositors vary much about its autobiographic nature, and about whether the speaker is unregenerate or regenerate; some think that he passes from the former to the latter within the chapter. Since the main lesson, namely, that neither Paul nor any other man, whether unregenerate or regenerate, can in his own native strength redeem himself from racial ruin, can be learned without solving these problems, probably they have received more attention than they deserve.

About the same time at which Paul wrote Romans, he gave the Corinthians an exhaustive, threefold analysis of humanity as follows: natural men and spiritual men, with the latter subdividing into carnal and mature Christians (1 Corinthians 2:14-15; 1 Corinthians 3:1). One commentator very plausibly suggests that Romans 7:1-25 and Romans 8:1-39 are built around these three men, and that Paul as representative man describes himself as successively experiencing all three. According to this, the natural (unregenerate) man appears in Romans 7:7-13; with the change from past to present tense, the carnal Christian (unnecessarily prolonged babyhood in Christ) appears in Romans 7:14-24; and the spiritual Christian in Romans 8:1-17.

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